A "better base" than closed source? No, not necessarily, but certainly a valid one. I think three very good large projects for examples would indeed be Zope and MySQL, plus JBoss. At their hearts, each primary developer of these products takes a different basic business model for their core commercial product, but there is some convergence among them: Zope (Zope Corp): Open source product: python-based application server. Commercialization: sells custom development services, also training. JBoss: (JBoss Group) Open source product: java-based application server. Commercialization: sells documentation and training, also sells custom development services. MySQL: (MySQL AB) Open source product: SQL database. Commercialization: sells support and training, sells non-GPL licenced versions, also sells custom development services. So at the very least, you've got three viable business models for the lead developers: Sell documentation and training, sell support, sell development services. In addition, each of these provides the basis for a vast cottage industry for outside developers to use these products to sell development, training and support services locally or internationally. That's what many of us on this list seem to do. Mostly these are smaller organizations (or individuals) than the prime developer... but this need not be the case for all open source projects. Of course, the only real difference in BUSINESS models (how revenues and profits are generated) is that these open source models do not derive revenue from licensing of the open source products, whereas licensing is one of the primary revenue sources in closed products. This provides the tradeoff... revenues from closed source licensing sales presumably goes to pay to further develop the closed source product with in-house programmers. In contrast, open source product development derives from the bazaar model of the community (which has "free" access to the product and cottage impetus to further its usefulness), and from in-house developers fed by the other revenue sources. Another cottage example: IBM derives revenues from Linux through direct consulting services and support, and also through sales of its own products that run on their Linux servers. IBM has thus become a part of the vast cottage industry spawned by the Linux open source operating system. Linux, of course, has a less simply defined but also successful business model (such a definition is left as an exercise for the reader, and for Robert). <notice i've completely avoided giving any references. it's my day off. /> my2c =Paul At 09:16 AM 1/10/2004 +0100, you wrote:

Hi all,

I am going to give a speech on "Open Source Business Models" for which I am searching ideas and concepts.

What I would like to show is why and where OSS provides a better base to make business than closed source. A main focus should not be how to provide "big" software packages like Zope/ Mysql/et al but on what business could be buildt around them.

Any Ideas and pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Robert